Eighth Circle of Hell in Canto XXVIIIWho, even with free words and many attempts to tell, could never fully tell the blood and wounds that now did I see? Dante begins the opening of Canto XXVIII with a rhetorical question. He and Virgil have just arrived in the Ninth Abyss of the Eighth Circle of Hell. In this pocket the Sowers of Discord and Schism are continually wounded by a demon with a sword. Dante asks the reader a question: who, even with free words and many attempts to narrate, could ever have fully recounted the blood and wounds that I now saw? (Lines 1-3) The rhetorical question draws the reader into the passage because we know at this point in the Divine Comedy that Dante is a great poet. What is it that Dante sees before him on the edge of the Ninth Abyss that is so ineffable that he, as a poet, feels he cannot handle? In the following lines Dante elaborates on this rhetorical position. Explain why it is important for every man to give a good description of what he sees. No poet can achieve this description: “Any language that attempted would certainly fail…” (L. 4) It is not just poetic talent that is at stake; poets do not have the background to give them the poetic power for such description. His reasoning is that "the superficiality of both our speech and our intellect cannot hold so much." (Lines 5-6) Once again the reader is intrigued; how could a man of Dante's stature criticize the language which is precisely the instrument he uses to create the epic work of the Commedia? If we cannot take Dante seriously with these opening statements, we must ask the question: what is Dante trying to do by teasing us with this artificial beginning of Canto XVIII? Dante will now contradict himself and try to describe what according to him is impossible. But if he were to go straight into describing the Ninth Abyss, that would deflate his rhetorical position. Instead, Dante first makes a rather lengthy comparison between the spectacles he has just witnessed and examples of bloodshed throughout human history. If you brought together all the men who once, in the fateful land of Apulia, had mourned their blood shed at the hands of the Trojans, as well as those who fell